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I Wanted to Be There When It Worked · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be there when it worked.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when you spend years working toward a moment of recognition,
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: only to leave just before it arrives?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: There are endings that hurt because something failed,
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  SPEAKER_00: and then there are endings that hurt because something finally worked,
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  SPEAKER_00: just after you were no longer there to see it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think I am grieving the second kind.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: There are endings that hurt because something failed,
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  SPEAKER_00: And then there are endings that hurt because something finally worked just
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: after you were no longer there to see it.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think I am grieving the second kind.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: A chapter of my professional life ended recently.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was unexpected and for a while I thought losing the job itself would be the hardest part.
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  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't.
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  SPEAKER_00: The hardest part came afterwards.
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  SPEAKER_00: Things I had spent months working towards started happening.
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  SPEAKER_00: Things I had fought for Waited for,
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  SPEAKER_00: worried about,
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  SPEAKER_00: believed in when they still felt impossibly far away,
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  SPEAKER_00: they were finally becoming real, and I wasn't there anymore.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be there when it worked.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even writing that feels vulnerable,
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  SPEAKER_00: because there is a part of me that thinks I should be above wanting recognition,
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  SPEAKER_00: that I should simply be proud of what I did and move on,
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  SPEAKER_00: that my worth shouldn't depend on somebody noticing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe one day I will feel that in my bones.
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  SPEAKER_00: But today, if I'm telling the truth, I wanted that moment.
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  SPEAKER_00: I wanted someone to turn around and say, look what you did.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not because I needed to be the most important person in the room,
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  SPEAKER_00: but because I knew what it had taken to get there.
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  SPEAKER_00: The effort, the persistence, the times I gave more than was convenient.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: The moments when it would have been easier to stop caring quite so much.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: There is something about working towards something for a long time
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  SPEAKER_00: that makes you imagine the ending.
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  SPEAKER_00: You picture the result, the relief, the satisfaction, maybe even the applause.
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  SPEAKER_00: I never got that ending.
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  SPEAKER_00: My story stopped somewhere between the work and the reward.
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  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is what I am grieving.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not a person, not even a place.
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  SPEAKER_00: I am grieving an ending I never got to experience.
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  SPEAKER_00: The messages stop.
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  SPEAKER_00: The calls stop.
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  SPEAKER_00: Everyone moves forward.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you realise that something can have occupied an enormous amount of space
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  SPEAKER_00: in your life without you continuing to occupy the same space in its.
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  SPEAKER_00: The story continues.
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  SPEAKER_00: You just don't get to see the next pages.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: People have told me that perhaps one day I will look back and be grateful.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're right.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe one day I will stand somewhere completely different and think,
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  SPEAKER_00: thank God that happened when it did.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe one day The timing that feels so cruel to me now will make perfect sense.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not there yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think I need to rush myself there.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need to turn grief into gratitude simply because gratitude makes for a prettier ending.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Today, there is still a tightness in my throat when I think about what I didn't get to witness.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are still moments when I wish the phone would ring And someone from
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: that old world would simply say, you should see what happened.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: It worked.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that call will never come.
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  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is partly why I'm writing this here.
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  SPEAKER_00: Since I started Just Julia,
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  SPEAKER_00: writing has become a strange way
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  SPEAKER_00: of sitting beside things I don't completely understand yet.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the stories I've written here happened years ago.
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  SPEAKER_00: I could look back at them with distance,
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  SPEAKER_00: turn them around in my hands, And try to understand what they left behind.
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  SPEAKER_00: This one is different.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm writing it from inside the feeling.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the wisdom of hindsight yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the beautiful lesson that ties everything together.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm not healed from it.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I've discovered something about writing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes putting words around what hurts doesn't make the hurt disappear.
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  SPEAKER_00: It simply gives it somewhere to go.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, for now, that is enough.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because the recognition I wanted may never arrive from the people I expected to give it to me.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I am trying to learn another kind.
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  SPEAKER_00: The quieter kind.
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  SPEAKER_00: The one where I can look back and say, I know how hard I worked.
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  SPEAKER_00: I know how much I cared.
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  SPEAKER_00: I know what I gave.
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  SPEAKER_00: If nobody witnessed the result, Does the work still count?
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  SPEAKER_00: I think I am slowly learning that it does.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of us simply leave before the harvest.
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  SPEAKER_00: We plant, we water, we wait.
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  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the season changes without us.
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  SPEAKER_00: I may not have been there for the harvest, but I was there for the planting.
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  SPEAKER_00: That part of the story is mine.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe I don't need to hurry this into a lesson.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, for now, it is enough to tell the truth.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be there when it worked.
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  SPEAKER_00: And even if nobody turns around to say,
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I saw what you did, perhaps I can learn to say it to myself.